Why we should use ebooks (rather than MOOCs) for CS learning opportunities for high school teachers. We use educational psychology principles to design our book. The talk presents data from our first three studies: usability, log file analysis, and learnability

1. Ebooks for CS Teacher Professional
Development
Mark Guzdial
School of Interactive Computing

2. Story
• Why ebooks (vs. MOOCs) for on-line CS
teacher learning
• Ed Psych Principles for ebooks
• Cognitive Load, Multimodality, Worked
Examples+Practice
• Demo of our ebook
• Usability of three ebooks
• Runestone, Zyante, CS Circles
• Do teachers learn from this?

3. Why Ebooks
• On-line is necessary to reach CS10K.
• Characteristics of potential CS teachers:
• Over-worked, little STEM background,
time in small chunks.
• MOOCs put lectures (time-based) on-line.
• Our teachers fit the demographic of
MOOC non-completers.
• Ebooks can fit into a teacher’s pace.

4. Ed Psych Principles
• Lower cognitive load
• Keep the germane. Lessen the extrinsic.
• Multimodality Principle.
• Use audio to increase comprehension of complex
visuals.
• Worked examples plus practice.
• Sweller showed that worked examples can be more
efficient for learning than more problem-solving.
• Trafton & Reiser showed interleaving examples +
practice was optimal.

5. Demo here
• Or video if Internet fails

6. Other Ebook Models
• Comparing to Runestone Interactive
CS CirclesZyante

7. CS CirclesZyante
ActiveCode
• Execute code in the browser
• Can edit the code
• Results are displayed
Runestone

8. Code Visualization
• Step through the code
• Displays variable and object
values
• Shows program output
CS CirclesZyante
Runestone

9. Parsons Problems
• Drag and drop code blocks in
correct order
• Bank of code blocks
• Feedback on order and
indention
CS CirclesZyante
Runestone

10. Usability: Runestone & Zyante
• Teachers in our study preferred Runestone,
with Zyante next.
f = # of teachers preferring
that style widget

11. What do users do?

12. Teachers Learned from Book
• Results from pilot study (3 more subjects to
analyze)
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Pretest Chapters 1 & 2 Chapters 3 & 4 Chapters 5 & 6 Chapters 7 & 8
Pretest and Posttest Scores
Participant 1
Participant 2
Participant 3

13. Where we’re going next…
• Automating the process of running the
study
• Open it up to any teacher anywhere
• Analyzing pilot data
• Pre-test => use (log file) => Post-test
• Adaptive Parson’s Problems
• Developing student ebook (IUSE)
• Working with Python-based CSP
Curriculum
• EarSketch in Gwinnett County

14. Thanks
• Our team: Barbara Ericson (co-PI), Briana
Morrison, Miranda Parker, Steven Moore,
Vipul Thakur
• Special thanks to Brad Miller and Philip Guo
• Work supported by NSF Grant #1138378
• But anything you don’t like is our fault

15. Spare Slides

16. Usability: Look and Feel